Our slow, unreckoning hearts
by Lilith Morgana
Summary: When war is the life you've been given and the future is increasingly unclear, you must at least try to make some sense of the still hours in between. Elissa Cousland/Loghain Mac Tir. Sequel to "Cartography".
1. Prologue

**A/N: **

_Once upon a time I finished a massive Elissa Cousland/Loghain Mac Tir story called **Cartography** and promptly started a sequel thought to be set during the timeline of DA2. Then I actually played DA2 and that story – **Our endless numbered days** - got lost in a sadly abandoned old thaig down in the Deep Roads and ever since, I've thought about how I would finish the tale of my beloved, grumpy warlords. I hate leaving things unfinished as I, like Loghain, prefer to do things with all my heart._

_As some of you may notice, this is a bit of a mashup of the first two chapters of that story. It's the only thing I'm going to recycle, the following chapters will be brand new._

_**Our endless numbered days** will continue in a different shape and the current chapters will be taken down and replaced. This story will only be a few chapters long, and it's meant to serve as a bridge between Cartography and Our endless numbered days. I'm sorry for any confusion I cause. Hopefully things will become clearer._

_And as always I should probably say that this story will make a bit more sense if you've read the previous instalments in the series since this is an immediate sequel to **In All These Wasteful Hours** and **Cartography** – both stories can be found here on ffnet._

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_Spare us all word of the weapons, their force and range,_

_The long numbers that rocket the mind;_

_Our slow, unreckoning hearts will be left behind,_

_Unable to fear what is too strange._

_Nor shall you scare us with talk of the death of the race._

_How should we dream of this place without us?-_

**Advice to a Prophet – Richard Wilbur**

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* * *

**PROLOGUE**

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* * *

There is magic in the stones around them.

Elissa observes it in Anders' face as he seems to drag power from the walls and wield it like a massive blade around them, above them, flashes of it streaming inside her when she forces herself forward, burying her swords in the broodmother one last time.

She feels it under her own skin as well, as a tickling presence here deep down in the belly of Drake's Fall. A quiet song in her blood, mingling with the screams of darkspawn and the burning exhaustion in her throat; a rhythm keeping her company as she falls, her arms and legs too tired to hold her upright.

She can feel it radiating from the very ground as she finally gives herself over to the boundless exhaustion and the release in sinking back into this downward swirl of emptiness and silence.

_Silence_.

The world that lately has lost its contours now seems to fade entirely in a blaze. Elissa lets it go. For a moment she lets it _go_ and there is no more war, no more duty and all her choices have ceased to matter, have raised themselves far beyond her reach. For a moment, there is peace. She no longer hears Nathaniel in her head, disagreeing about the offer made by the darkspawn that called himself the Architect and she no longer hears herself as a dark echo of someone else: "As long as I am the Commander of the Grey, I will brook no threat to Ferelden by choosing my allies so unwisely". She no longer wonders, even briefly, if she made the wrong decision.

For a moment, brief and illusive as it is, she is free.

_Get up_, Dog insists then, his nose cold and wet against the back of Elissa's hand. She wonders when she lost her gauntlet and stretches out her fingers experimentally, aiming for her weapons but finding only wet dirt. Glancing sideways, she spots the new sword still half-way inside the broodmother's neck and her other sword right by her side. Grimacing, Elissa sits up abruptly.

The new sword. _Her_ new sword.

Her new sword that she had been handed by Herren a few days ago, unceremoniously, but with a remark that shot like a jolt of pain through her. _From General Loghain. It took a while to perfect it. _

There's a whole world of emotions connected to that sword, she thinks, still having to bite back the flurry of them. So much she cannot allow to pass through the tight rein she keeps on her own impulses lately, so much that shiver inside her as she walks up to the defeated creature, pulling her sword out of the stinking darkspawn corpse.

It's not yet familiar to her eyes, but seems to be perfectly adjusted to her grip, the hilt is resting softly in her hand. Even the runes and enchantments are weighed and balanced after her moves and it should not have come as such a surprise to her that Loghain had memorized her fighting style – she has defeated him twice now – but it had, and to some extent it still does. _He_ is in that blade, ridiculous as it sounds.

It's quite possibly the finest gift she has ever received and it's so much _more_, so much else. Elissa draws a sharp breath, still hearing Loghain's voice in her head - slightly patronising since she is being so sentimental – and feeling the course of his blood run in her veins.

"Commander?" Sigrun asks. "Are you alright?"

Elissa turns, realising she has been staring into the darkness ahead of her, fingers curled around polished, _perfect_ metal and her thoughts wrapped hard and firm around that one path that lies ahead.

"Let us get back to the Vigil," she says.

_And count the dead_, nobody adds but the words hang unspoken in the air above them all the same.

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Vigil's Keep is a place of measurable things these days.

A collection of pieces, of numbers; structures that can be seen and counted and understood. And because Elissa doesn't understand much else at the moment, she _counts_: twenty guards dead; three knights still missing in the chaos of crumbling stone and caved-in walls; dozens upon dozens of bodies being burned in the courtyard; ten crates of supplies distributed to the survivors outside of Amaranthine, another ten expected shortly.

She counts her own banal existence as well, counts the steps between the kitchen and the bedchamber, the numbers of letters she writes and the days that pass.

Numbers make sense – a chilling, rough sort of _sense_.

In the ruins of the fortress there are empty spaces behind every word and deed, as though everything is merely ghosts now. They have lost so much and the _immensity_ of it, of what has disappeared and slipped out of her hands, feels like a hard knot in her chest, a lump of weariness in her belly.

Elissa counts to ten and crosses the courtyard, squaring her shoulders and bracing herself, her own steps heavy against the ground, as though she's trying in vain to anchor herself in this place. Her thoughts are everywhere but here, however, like stubborn fragments they keep defying her logic and reason. They are in Highever, in Denerim, in the scattered places across the map where she has travelled and where she knows people live and darkspawn will threaten them because she doesn't possess enough Wardens to protect them all against whatever it is that endangers them now.

Her thoughts, dark and beckoning and sharp as needles, are in Orlais and whenever she realises that, it becomes a little harder to breathe.

At least the keep is becoming livable again.

They have cleared out a few rooms downstairs – rooms for eating, for sleeping, for the healers and maids to tend to the wounded – and as the order is restored in bits and pieces, they start forming new routines for their lives as well.

Elissa works hard all day, an ache in her body reminding her in the evenings of exactly _how_ hard; she works so intently that she forgets to eat and doesn't remember until Varel places a hand on her elbow, steering her towards the kitchen.

She sleeps badly some nights, others she all but falls asleep standing up. In the early mornings she wakes, breathless, but air is dry and heavy here, drapes itself over her like mourning garb. She always gets up then and looks for something to occupy her thoughts. It's during those hours she most appreciates walking and _measuring_: sixty-nine lengths of her feet across the floor or a room; toes and heels and walls and windows. All palpable things that will come together around her.

She's the centre, she tells herself this in the crisp chill of her bedchamber when sleep is denied her. She is the leader, the steady hand, the one who cannot escape like she couldn't escape the fate of her family, or the course of her own blood.

So she recites the familiar words of the canticles she pretends she can still believe in. Other times she lights a candle and kneels before it, bargaining with the Maker and Andraste both, trading lives and deaths. It's what a commander always does, it shouldn't make her feel so hollow.

A fortnight after Amaranthine almost burns and the Vigil crumbles, the visitors start to arrive.

Fergus is the first one.

He rides in through the inner gates one afternoon, followed by a group of knights and Cauthrien who is a few steps behind but somehow feels closer, Elissa observes dimly through the overwhelming sense of relief at seeing her brother. He looks well, he is unharmed and he is _here_. Her stomach flips at the realisation.

"Elissa, thank the-" Fergus says, the rest of his sentence muffled by the intensity of their embrace, his face buried in her hair.

"Fergus." Elissa's voice is calm, but she shivers as her arms tighten around his body.

"You must stop _doing_ this," he mutters, and she can feel how he shakes his head.

"What? Refusing to die decently?"

It's not until she's said it she realises _what_ she has said, and where the words come from, and she winces as the images of Loghain flood her mind. She refuses to let them most of the time, refuses to be dragged down into the slump of useless thoughts that lead nowhere.

Fergus lets her go, his gaze now scrutinizing her as though he's searching for signs of damage on her face. Elissa smiles, thinking she has spent a lifetime in the months that have passed since they last saw each other. She has travelled with Loghain and built yet another life in Gwaren, then one here and then -

_No_.

"We tried to send reinforcements once we heard the darkspawn were headed towards Amaranthine," Fergus says, frowning.

"We?" Elissa asks.

"I," Fergus corrects himself, but it seems half-hearted and he quickly shrugs. A flicker of something slightly unsettled crosses his features. "Cauthrien has been advising me, of course."

"Of course."

Elissa throws Cauthrien a glance; she is talking to a stable boy, still holding the reins of her horse while she shoulders a saddlebag. If she has heard what they are talking about, she shows no signs of it. It's strange, thinking about her in a different way – _such_ a different way, if Elissa's premonitions from back in Denerim are in fact true – and in different circumstances. For all her brother's generous taste in women, Elissa has never thought he would ever appreciate someone like Cauthrien. There's a hardness to her that reminds Elissa of herself and not at all of the soft-spoken, plump barmaids and servants her brother had spent his youth drooling over - nor the woman he had eventually married.

Perhaps, she thinks, stifling the urge to stroke his arm, it's easier with someone who doesn't remind him of the past.

Perhaps she's reading too much into everything.

"The Mother's forces would have outnumbered us no matter how many men you sent," she says instead, leading them across the courtyard and up towards the keep. She notices how her brother looks at the ruined parts – they are difficult to miss, the glaring holes in the silhouette – but he doesn't mention them and Elissa doesn't, either.

"The Mother?"

"Darkspawn," she says, wondering how you explain a broodmother to someone who isn't a Warden. "She was their leader."

"Huh." Fergus nods, thoughtful.

They wait for Cauthrien to catch up. When she does, Elissa presses her hand in a greeting that seems to fall in between both roles and habits but it _has_ been a while since they last saw each other; Cauthrien's hand is dry and calloused and her expression somewhat grim.

"Commander," she says with a nod.

"Cauthrien." Elissa nods back. "It's good to see you."

Fergus smiles, his gaze wandering between them for a while before they make their way inside; Elissa walks in the middle of the two guests, a flurry of unfinished thoughts in her head and another beat in her chest, the change of company striking something deep inside.

"We have done our best to restore what could be restored," she explains, gesturing towards the massive building. "It's going quite well. We've had a lot of support from the lords and ladies."

"Indeed?" Fergus snorts.

"Actually, yes." Elissa has been sceptical and surprised for the past two weeks, but the nobility has been reasonably good to her, in ways she could not have foreseen – despite Loghain, despite _Howe_, despite the choices and decisions that affected their lives even when Elissa had not intended for that to happen.

"Have you heard from Loghain?" The expression on Cauthrien's face becomes visibly darker as she looks at Elissa, something trying to break through the composure.

Elissa is shuffling through her thoughts, as she has become used to doing as far as Loghain is concerned, thinking stupidly that she is transparent, that everybody can read her emotions on her skin. Of course they cannot. She has perfect mastery of herself and she is nothing if not sensible. Well, most of the time.

"I have, yes."

"Oh?"

"I had a letter," Elissa says. "A while ago now."

"Where did they send him? Do you know?" Cauthrien's tone is still as dark as her expression.

"Montsimmard."

"Is he staying there?" Fergus asks, opening the door to the throne room like he is a lord of the estate, rather than a guest. Elissa is about to mention it but rights herself, reminded once more that these times erases boundaries, if nothing else.

"I don't think so." She sighs. "I... don't know."

She _doesn't_ know. In fact, she has absolutely no idea if Loghain is even alive or if he has been captured or deported somewhere or if the unknown darkspawn threat has had something else entirely in store for him. They know next to nothing thus far and recently, the messengers haven't been spotted anywhere within Ferelden's borders. All these tiny fragments are hardly more than guesses, scattered over various threads in her mind but offering no answers, only further questions; Elissa is so bloody tired of being forced to _guess_ the course of action that every conversation bringing this up feels like a personal insult.

"So what are you planning?" Cauthrien asks.

"I'm still undecided," Elissa replies, which is some sort of half-truth, at least. She is still undecided about certain things.

Cauthrien raises an eyebrow, but she doesn't pick up the question again.

Elissa spots Leonie at the other end of the throne room, sitting at a table with Sigrun and Anders and Nathaniel who has risen to his feet and observes Fergus with what appears to be a peculiar blend of apprehension and interest. Looking over his shoulder at Elissa and Cauthrien, Fergus frowns.

"That's Nathaniel _Howe_?"

"I told you he was with the Wardens, did I not?" Elissa realises she might not have, and tries to scramble through her recollection of letters sent with no luck. Her correspondence over the past few months has been scant and mostly consisted of brief reports even Loghain would find sparse.

But Fergus has already moved out of earshot, curious as always, and Elissa is still standing in the doorway with Cauthrien.

The throne room isn't what it used to be. It was one of the last lines of defence, as the Vigil finally gave way to the attacking darkspawn after nearly a week of valiant fighting, one that Elissa and the others had made it back in time to help defend. Before they had driven off the last stragglers of the horde, one of the emissaries had launched an enormous glyph of fire and poison right into the remaining silverite-clad soldiers and the room, Elissa recalls with a grimace, had all but exploded. It had taken every bit of Anders' strength to counter that spell and for a few hours afterwards, Elissa was certain he was going to perish from the exhaustion. It had hit her surprisingly hard, the idea of losing him.

She had lost Velanna. She had lost countless knights and soldiers and freemen volunteering to fight under the Hero of Ferelden. She had lost almost everyone but a dozen of battered soldiers and Varel who had led the troop who fought and reclaimed the outer gates and Oghren, who crawled out of the ruins like a cat going on his ninth life.

Elissa is struck by an unexpected desire to talk to Cauthrien about it, about the _loss_ of it all, because she figures Cauthrien would understand. But the words don't find their way out of her so they are quiet together instead, for quite some time. Quiet and motionless, like statues – roles desperately unsuited to their tempers, Elissa thinks and snorts to herself.

"You are going to Orlais." Cauthrien's voice is low, toneless; she doesn't _ask_. She already knows, Elissa realises, because Cauthrien is used to life and death and and the awful, _impossible_ scales and probably knows, too, about the things that might upset them.

There's a moment of silence filling up the air between them, a trail of fragility and doubt, and Elissa looks out over the room. All things considered, it might even be more fruitful to throw herself on an outreached sword than going to Orlais to investigate the turmoil with little besides her handfuls of nothing to aid her. _No. No doubts._Shaking her head she blows out her breath in a rough sort of sigh and fastens her gaze somewhere beyond all the people in front of her. Their faces are so familiar now, after these past two weeks when they have been each other's everything as the dreary events have shuffled them close together. Their fates are running in circles around her own.

"Yes." Elissa gives her a brief glance. "Of course I am."

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There are ghosts in Orlais.

At least that is what they feel like, the quiet shadows in Loghain's mind, simmering and surfacing at the moments when he is alone in the crowds, estranged by language and choice. He is not the only one who doesn't speak the Orlesian tongue – the Order has converged Wardens from all over Thedas lately – and he is not usually left to his own devices either. They don't trust him enough for that.

But even so he has hardly spoken to anyone in weeks and his longest conversations take place in his mind, in his memories and imagination, where he finds his threads of thoughts slowly spinning around the absences of allies.

He speaks to Maric, as always. Speaks to him of the bloody awful nation that keeps him prisoner, the suspicions and doubts Loghain has accumulated since they crossed the border; speaks of the political implications of everything and the lack of answers to his own questions; he speaks of Ferelden and West Hill and Denerim – even of Anora and the royal heir, when he's had one mug of ale too many.

He speaks to Rowan, too, about war and strategy and choices. She would find the Order badly organised, he thinks with a smirk.

During the many hours spent travelling, walking or riding through the vast fields that are framing the Imperial Highway, he tells Celia about the ridiculous culture and absurd customs of the locals.

He doesn't speak to Elissa. The memory of her is too bright, too near; she is a silent mark at the back of his mind, a flutter in his breath and a slow, steady rhythm in his blood – _their_ blood.

He doesn't speak to Elissa and he isn't _going_ to because she is bloody well not a ghost.

Instead he writes to her from an inn right outside the city walls of Montsimmard. It's his second letter and in it he's telling her that some of the Wardens are going to Verchiel while he is remaining in Montsimmard with the Antivans and the aggressive dwarf, Dvalinn. He writes that the darkspawn are under control for the moment but that there have been alarming reports from Verchiel and Lydes; he writes that he still doesn't know why he has been summoned or by _whom_ and that the First Warden is rumoured to be dead.

Perhaps she already knows and perhaps his letters are lost in the turmoil of the Thaw, but he writes anyway, to calm himself as much as anything else.

He has learned lately that news travel slowly and with great difficulty even with Wardens messengers. Stories of war are told at the inns along the roads, exchanged for mugs of ale and bowls of stew; as Loghain and the others come to rest in the evenings, along the highway between Val Firmin and Montsimmard, they listen to the travelling men and women who carry tales over the borders.

"They say the keep in Amaranthine fell to the darkspawn."

Someone occasionally takes the time to translate the stories – tonight it's the Antivan Warden-Commander, slumped down beside Loghain at the table.

"And the Wardens?" Loghain asks, his voice hard as stone. He should have stayed in Ferelden, he thinks for a fraction of a second, before he bans such pointless regret. From what he hears of the events occurring there it's not as though his presence would have made a difference either.

"I don't know yet." The Antivan shakes his head. "Some of them are said to have led the battle for the city itself, leaving the fortress undefended."

"Did the city fall too?"

"No." The Antivan reaches for his goblet of wine. "Don't ask me why they decided not to burn it. It was overrun. But from what they tell us, the Warden-Commander managed to save it."

"Yes." Loghain nods, feeling the relief rushing in over him, seeping into his words and softening them. "That sounds like her."

There's a long stretch of silence as they drink, any further comments on the situation in Ferelden efficiently being swallowed up by the noise of the crowd around their table, the crescendo of tired Wardens relaxing after a day's duty. It is rare to reach conclusions here, with information as scattered as the bandits along the road – they get rumours and stories and sometimes even reports but they cannot make much of them. Val Royeaux is far away, so is Ferelden. And so, Loghain has learned, is Antiva where the Order has been driven to the verge of extinction or forced to flee.

The plan, as he understands it, is to make their way to the capital to meet the others who have been coming to Orlais from all across Thedas. He tries not to think of this plan in terms of good or bad since he has no power to change it. They want him to learn humility. He tries to bow his head and silence his hatred, to right himself and merge into the ranks where he is _nobody_ and yet somehow also the sum of everything he has ever done.

He tries to remind himself of this that night as he rests in his bed – he is in no hurry to _sleep_ in the company of Orlesians – when his mind races, as though it expects battle.

The following morning, they are attacked.

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_A/N: As always, feel free to tell me what you think._


	2. Not for victory

_Not for victory_

_but for the day's work done_

**Te deum - Charles Reznikoff**

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Ferelden greets them with hoar frost.

It's as befitting their return as anything, Loghain supposes, as they slowly but surely make their way from the ship to dry, icy land. They've suffered a couple of losses over the past few days but nothing unexpected, mostly a handful of the most severely injured Wardens.

Beside him, Elissa is quiet and hard like the winters in the North, observing their surroundings with a grimness that has lasted since she first ordered their retreat. There had been little else to _do_ save dying like animals, but she had only reluctantly accepted it, the anger boiling around the insight still visible in her expression. It echoes in him; he can all but taste the ashes of her disappointment in his own mouth, the way it mingles with relief and selfishness.

"You risked a great deal going to Orlais," he says in a slow, careful voice. He means _everything _but knows that such dramatic statements rub his commander the wrong way and close all angles for further discussion and there is too much to talk about at present to needlessly prickle her ego and wound her pride.

"Yes," Elissa concedes. She sounds distant.

He inhales, impatience like a surge in him.

"That was incredibly foolish and rash, even for you," he blurts, too quickly. He feels strained to the very border of his own capacity and tired far beyond its limits; recent events that are still tearing at his momentum - not to mention recent _years _that have left him out of practice as far as coaxing goes. Cailan had always deserved much less subtlety than his father. "The risk was too great."

Something hard and red-hot flashes in her eyes. "No."

Loghain looks straight ahead. They sit in a carriage making its way from the coast to Vigil's Keep, huddled up among their belongings and still carrying the marks of travel and battle on their skins. As Elissa shifts in her seat and he moves a little to give her more room, their twin shadows slide against the walls, wavering somewhat before coming to rest again. He exhales, trying to get rid of the sensation of standing on the verge of an avalanche, reaching for thin air.

"Leaving Ferelden open to invasion-" he begins. It feels, even to himself, like a bad imitation of the man he used to be. It's evident by the glint in his commander's eyes that she agrees.

"Yes, instead of defending my country with a dozen untrained Wardens at my back, I decided to seek answers to a myriad of questions," she snaps. "I will not apologise for that. Nor will I apologise for answering the call for help from a fellow Warden."

Fellow Wardens, Loghain thinks, suddenly even more tired. He still has all the names in his mouth – names of allies and enemies, of prisoners and captors – and the memories of prison cells and his own scattered thoughts.

_Orlesian prison cells_, he had thought. _How drearily fitting._

_Trust the bloody Orlesians to wreak havoc even within their own country_, he had thought, carefully misremembering his own recent history.

_Damn you, Maric_, he had thought, bitterly. _If you had only endured on that damn throne none of this would have happened.  
_

He'd heard voices through all kinds of layers – pain, delusion, exhaustion – and one of them had been hers, as dark and angry as he had remembered it. _You've captured my general. Why? T_hen, much later her voice had been a breath away, just over his ear, hot and heavy and cracked: _don't you dare leave me now._

He hadn't. Though he can't take much pride in that since his continued existence is more a result of healing magic – and possibly some old-fashioned Fereldan sturdiness - than his own survival skills.

As far as rescue mission goes, Elissa's had been near perfection. From what she has told him during the journey back – in the rare, fleeting moments they have had to themselves – she had already helped the Orlesian lieutenant defeat the rebelling fraction of the Orlesian Order and bring about some kind of fragile truce. Loghain and the others who had been held captive in a fort near Montsimmard had been _on the way home _as she puts it.

Loghain is uncertain whether or not he believes her. There's a stubbornness in her that rivals his own and he has not been above lying about similar missions in his past, he thinks, watching her now. Perhaps it doesn't matter. A jolt of warmth thaws his profound sense of annoyed _dread _as he realises that they are actually in Ferelden again. That he did not need to die like a dog among Orlesians. That for all the odds that state that they – and Loghain in particular - will die rather soon, it did not have to be just _yet_.

That she had, in every sense of the word, _saved _him.

"You wasted no time in Orlais, at least," he offers. He means it as a compliment on her strategic mind but it comes out of his mouth as a condescending rebuke. His time alone in that cell has not done wonders to his already rusty grasp of politeness and common curtsy. In addition he feels a frayed sort of frustration with his own contradictory ideas and impressions. Part of him is furious with her for marching across the border; another part of him admires her resolute response to a horrible situation. She has done well; she should never have come.

A good night's sleep in a proper bed, he tells himself. That's what he needs to sort it all out. And a bath.

Elissa gives him a long glance, raking a hand through her hair and crossing her legs. There's a strain in her face that he does not like, shades of too much responsibility and too much care. She has told him once in a half-drunken state that she is selfish enough to survive all of this, that she nurses the spoiled brat in her heart so that she will never be the selfless martyr of goodness her role might demand of her. It's difficult to believe her, difficult to even try.

"Leonie quickly managed to get aid from the Antivans," she says. "They received her letters and had already begun investigating the news about the First Warden themselves."

Naturally they would have. As would the scarce Fereldan Wardens, had they known. Loghain might have advised against it – lines are removed and maps redrawn, even his heart has shown signs of alteration, but he has shed blood for Ferelden for so long it's become a habit he cannot break himself of and he is nothing if not stubborn – but that's what they would have done, all the same.

He finds a certain grace in that thought now, watching Amaranthine appear in the distance.

There is, he has often thought over these past two years, a freedom in the chalice the Wardens offer. It's not without darkness, nor is it unconditional. Freedom never is. Yet the fact remains that nothing besides joining this woman's Order would have offered him such a respite from his former life, his past. Here, sensing the taut lines and too-sharp angles of the Warden-Commander's body against his own contours again, he is reminded of the truths of this life: that he's ensnared in a hopeless, wretched cause that will be the death of him but that he is no longer _trapped_.

He looks at the packs on the floor of the carriage, the way they seem to swallow every empty space. _I've taken most records I could find _she had told him as they were boarding the ship back to Ferelden, shouldering a large sack of what apparently is recruiting records and old journals kept by the Wardens in the cities she had been to. _The Orlesians start an armed conflict, I steal their stuff. It's only fair. _

Loghain smiles inwardly at the memory.

Despite having travelled together since Montsimmard, he's not yet adjusted to her presence and the effect it has on him is both painfully familiar and strange at once. All these blurred distinctions between them, everything she has _become_. His memory seems unwilling to reach as far back as those days before he left Amaranthine and today Loghain is too tired for it anyway.

All he knows here and now is that it had seemed simpler then, perhaps because it was.

He had never expected to return.

"We're preparing for an unfathomable war," Elissa says; her face is turned away from him. He doesn't have to look at her to know that her gaze is as dark as her words. "Though it still appears to be far away."

"War often appears that way, regardless," he says, suddenly older than he cares to think about. "But in this case I believe you are right."

"We should make the most of the time we have then."

Loghain has been planning ahead for a while already, his mind willing and obedient in these matters no matter how tired his body is. _You look to war for comfort, _Maric had told him once, despairing. Loghain had protested – still protests at the memory – but it had been futile given the way his life had spun out. _War is constant_, he had told the king. _Only fools and children believe it isn't._

"I agree," he says. "Preparation is a rare luxury."

Elissa makes a low grunt, an amused sound that cuts right through the direness of the conversation. When he looks at her he notices that she smiles; it is the first time he has seen her do so since he left Amaranthine many months ago and the sight of it lands somewhere in his chest.

"Only you would use a word like that when speaking of war," she says, her voice rendered soft by the lingering smile.

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The carriage moves even slower than time has during the past few months.

It seems like the snowed-in landscape – the reason they are travelling the short distance tucked into this means of transportation in the first place – is holding fast, resisting travellers and natives alike. As though the arling has closed itself around its own wrecked state. She wonders if the cold at least has frozen the straggling darkspawn hordes to death, if it has offered that small mercy.

Then again, Orlais has taught her that darkspawn – even the talking, plotting kind that makes her veins freeze in terror – are preferable if the alternative is Wardens turning on each other. Warriors, wardens, _mages_. All these sodding mages and their blood magic, like filth creeping under her skin.

She had arrived to a country that bore no signs of war, a nation as prosperous and magnificent as she remembered it. Only in the Order did she find a trail of that destruction that had wiped out Leonie's whole group of Wardens. Only underground, in the shadows, had she begun to make some sense of it all.

Perhaps _sense _is the wrong word, she thinks now, folding her sore arms across her chest and tipping her head back against the seat. There's little sense in bargains with the enemy; she would have thought hundreds of years filled with stories of wars being lost to ill-advised compromises or for that matter tales of mages being ensnared by demons had driven that point home. Apparently not. Even some of her own companions had thought the Architect made a good proposal, after all. That recollection is an angry flutter in her veins, a constant protest.

The conflict is settled for the moment at least – a brief, partial solution to a chaos that seems to be as wide and vast as Thedas and as erratic as all the mages in Tevinter. Elissa can't suppress a shudder at the thought.

_The earth is rumbling_, someone had told her. _Something is coming._

_It's already begun in the Free Marches_, someone else echoes in her memory. _The veil is being torn, the wounds are opening._

Unfathomable war, indeed.

It shames her to admit it even to herself, but one of the recurring threads running in her mind as they had fought their way across southern Orlais had been that she doesn't want to do it alone. This war, when it comes, it will wreck them all apart. Deep down that is her belief. It's a bone-hard and pitch-black conviction containing very little hope but she also knows that no matter the premises and regardless of the odds, she will stand ready when she has to, with an army at her back and a sword in her hand. This is what she does; she fights to the death.

War has branded itself into her life; it's her past and her future and a song in her blood. If she had ever hoped for a respite of the kind Alistair would always speak of – _one day this will be over_, he had told her over campfires and whispered to her in his tent and she had thought _please don't make promises, please don't make promises, please _until it hurt – she lost that last scrap of faith after the Blight.

It doesn't end. It shifts and alters and spins around but duty doesn't _end_.

She doesn't want to do it alone.

"I didn't risk too much," she says matter of factly, aware that it's glaringly obvious she has been turning this over in her head since he first accused her of it. She says it quietly, her voice a mere mutter. "I was _very _careful not to risk the Order. It was all sorted out. The only life I placed in any kind of danger by going inside that fort was my own."

"_Yes_," Loghain says pointedly, _wearily._

"I thought you were _dead._"

"Then your strategy was all the more rash and foolish," Loghain retorts but his words lack the hard edges from before.

Exasperated, Elissa snorts as she glances sideways at him, looking at him properly for the first time in what seems like an eternity - or at the very least a lifetime. Being a Warden seems to do just that: age her several years in just a few months, causing unrest in her body. She wonders if it does the same to him. He sits up straight in the carriage, hands resting on his thighs, a posture of self-control and momentum. His face is just like she remembers it – neutral, stern, composed except for those precious moments when he slips and she sees through him; there are traces of Orlais there, making him look thinner and more worn, older. It causes a flurry of concern, sharp little twists and turns that make her throat tighten.

She's somewhat out of her depth here, still, but there's a new certainty between them now, a fixed mark of something – _anything - _deeply rooted in the tapestry of her mind. He's _there_. It's the sameness she longs for she thinks at times, the shared experience that breaches every difference and shapes a little world of its own, with its own set of borders. The gap between the man she knows and the life which has been mapped out for him intrigues her, at times because it mirrors her own life, at times because it absolutely does _not_.

There are no words to express that so instead she moves her hand over his, the thick leather of her gloves warm against the steel gauntlets he wears. They both look down and when she lifts her gaze upwards, Loghain meets it, holds it for a very long time as though he is looking for something.

"Tomorrow we can start setting our course for the near future," Elissa says, because it's always been an easy escape for both of them. Strategy. It holds back and _contains _and she loves it, helplessly.

He nods; her hand is still cupping his. "If the Vigil still stands."

The Vigil still stands.

As they approach, the massive sprawl of it against the sky seems almost _excessive_, like it has grown in their absence, its shadow hanging even darker over the arling it's built to protect. But Elissa finds that she likes it that way. Perhaps it's merely testament to the fact that she has been away for so long, but there's something grand about Amaranthine, something comfortingly stoic about a city that survives itself, time and time again. The Orlesians could not temper it, the darkspawn could not destroy it and every year the storms of the Waking Sea do their best to wreck the walls, but to no avail.

When the carriage stops on the grounds and she spots all the people who are waiting outside to greet them, Elissa allows herself to be swept away by a torrent of half-finished, exhausted thoughts all ending in an overwhelming sense of being _home_.

She looks at Loghain again and there's a hint of something similar in his face as he nods, briefly, and lets go of her hand.

The rest of the carriages come to halt around their own as Elissa takes a deep breath and steps out on the grounds of Vigil's keep for the first time in seven months.

_Home_, she thinks again. Such as it is.

If not for the welcoming party standing out here in the biting cold she would hardly remember the title she carries around these days, she realises as the guards and the servants greet her formally. Her past seems so distant, especially the slices of it she had never cared for in the first place. But here, in front of these people, she is the Arlessa of Amaranthine and the Commander of the Grey and she takes a deep, steadying breath as she steps into the formalities of her roles.

"These Wardens are new additions to our forces." She looks at the familiar faces, smiles briefly at Sigrun and Varel, the latter probably already counting the spare rooms in his head. "Most of them were stationed in Lydes, now they'll stay with us."

No one asks about the circumstances; there will be time for explanations tomorrow. Elissa turns to the group travelling with her.

"This is our keep." She gestures towards the grounds ahead of them. "Direct any practical matters to Seneschal Varel and any other questions to Nathaniel."

Nathaniel nods, curtly but with decidedly less vehemence than she can recall. She had suspected it would either do him good or break him once and for all to be left in charge and she looks at Varel who gives her a glance that tells her that she had been correct. It's good, this way he will be of use to her.

"Welcome to Amaranthine," she finishes, adding a smile for good measure though she feels more inclined to proceed inside and find somewhere to sit down for a very long time. "Come, don't let us linger in the cold."

A collective murmur rises from the wardens behind her and the ones in front of her, reminding her briefly of the way darkpawn sing in low, wordless sounds.

"Commander, it's good to see you," Varel says as they all make their way across the snowy courtyard. "We worried when we didn't receive any reports from Jader, but you changed your route, didn't you?"

Elissa glances over her shoulder at Loghain who walks a few steps behind her, seemingly in a discussion with Sigrun.

"I made some adjustments, yes." She frowns a little as she spots the beginning of a brand new building beside the barracks. "You made adjustments here as well, I see."

"It was my idea," Nathaniel says and there's that blend of defensiveness and irritation that she remembers, if slightly subdued these days. "The Vigil is home to Wardens, after all. The idea is that our numbers will grow, I take it?"

"Indeed. I'm certain you made good decisions. You can tell me all about it later."

He gives her a wary look of someone who is trying to determine the reason behind the words rather than the meaning of the words themselves. Relax, she thinks irritably in her head but she doesn't say it.

"Reconstruction aside, did anything important happen while I was away?" Elissa asks instead when they're inside the great hall, having escaped the cold at long last. Her eyes are on the fires burning in the fireplaces, wishing herself near one of them.

"Yes." Sigrun suddenly stands before them, hands on her hips. There's a new kind of seriousness at the bottom of her gaze – nothing worse than experience, Elissa hopes, a new life to drown out her old one – as their eyes meet for a moment. Beside her, Anders shifts uncomfortably. "Of _course _it did."

Elissa gives Loghain a hasty glance, before turning back to the dwarf.

"We can talk further once you have had a hot meal and some wine, Commander," Varel interrupts before she has time to ask Sigrun to elaborate. "For now, I believe we ought to welcome you home."

.

.

* * *

_**A/N:**The wiki tells me Varel dies defending the Keep. I had absolutely no memory of that from any playthrough so I decided it doesn't happen. Ignorance is bliss and all that. Besides, if Anders can survive despite, you know, dying, so can Varel._


	3. Modus vivendi

Loghain wonders if anyone has ever given him a warmer, more eager welcome than Dog who's currently barking happily, two steps ahead of him. He's been following in their footsteps like a shadow since they stepped out of their carriage and his enthusiasm has yet to wane. The only thing that seems to disturb the dog is the fact that he cannot always be with _both _Loghain and Elissa as they must tend to separate duties and sleep in vastly different parts of the keep.

In all honesty Dog isn't the only one who finds _that_part frustrating, Loghain concludes when they've been in Amaranthine for several days and he has yet to spend one moment alone with the commander. But this is of course how it is.

There is much to do, plenty of matters that they can occupy themselves with and part of him is glad for the distractions. However trivial they may appear, each and every one of them serves as a gradual shift back to comfortable routines. Returning to his old life proves to be a task in itself; he's been gone for a while and his place in this old keep had never been a clear one to begin with.

In some ways he is an obstacle here, he thinks, watching the Commander go about her daily chores. He brought nothing but misery to these parts of Ferelden and lords and ladies rarely forget even the smallest vexation – they hold grudges for not receiving invitations to formal events, the ghost of Celia reminds him in his head, surely you understand that they will never forget a civil war.

Returning, he is reminded once more of everything he cannot undo.

He's reminded, too, of the tension and trouble he could cause Elissa.

Vigil's Keep may have been given to the Wardens but to Loghain, it will always be clear that it's truly someone else's, that it's an old fortress already claimed by an arling full of people. He catches himself missing Gwaren of all the Maker-forsaken places in Ferelden. Back when he _ought _to have considered it home a little more often and with less indifference, he certainly couldn't muster up any warmer sentiments, but now he remembers the reconstruction work they had performed there, almost a year ago. There was a sense of restoration in those actions, he thinks now. A slow, certain way of mending what was broken. It surprises him to learn that he misses it.

Perhaps he merely misses a simpler time. That is what old men are wont to do, after all.

When he speaks to Elissa or holds her gaze across a room in this increasingly crowded keep he wonders if it's _that_ he misses. _Her_. There had been clearer lines between them then, their places and positions sharp and steady.

Here, things blur in a different way.

Most of the other Wardens leave him alone – some of them even seem to actively avoid him which is nothing unusual, of course. The dwarf they had found in Kal'Hirol, however, shows no such hesitation in his presence.

"Were you held hostage?" she asks the day after their homecoming; Loghain is going over recruiting records and reports of their recent Joinings and stifles a sigh. "By the Wardens?"

"Yes. For a little while."

"What did they want from you?"

She perches herself on a locked chest near his desk, observing him.

It's a good question, he thinks. Initially he had the impression of being there for information, had thought that the Wardens and the darkspawn who were working with them would interrogate him. About the Archdemon, the ritual, the marsh witch, about any trace of his inglorious recent history they could possibly have managed to find. Then they had gradually let him understand that their purpose was different, though it would be a lie to claim he knows precisely what they had wanted. When he tells the dwarf this, she nods.

"We studied a lot of old Warden journals while you were gone." She grins, as though digging into this inglorious order's history is what she considers entertainment. He may have underestimated her, if that is truly the case. "Some of them seemed, well, sodding _mad_. Maybe they wrote them while they were drunk?"

She appears momentarily lost in this fantasy of hers.

"Did you have a point?" Loghain asks, putting down the documents on the desk again, in a pile that is slightly more organised than the one Elissa had made, though not by much. Through the window, he notices a large group of wardens approach; they're on their way to the keep from the barracks, which means supper is at hand.

"Not really." Sigrun shrugs. "Only that we found a few stories of Wardens who tried to make deals with the darkspawn. Like the one the Architect wanted the Commander to consider. Once, the Antivans almost agreed – they had been promised stability and military aid for their nation. At least that's what the records say."

"It seems to be a promise they hold dear."

"They wanted you to do the same?" She's even more intrigued now, sitting on the edge of the chest and not letting him out of her sight for a second.

Loghain nods. There seems to be little use in keeping secrets at this point.

Who would have thought he'd ever advocate the idea of uniting the nations of Thedas against the darkspawn – or any other threat for that matter? It had been a patently impossible concept to him and still is. But fate's sense of humour has proved itself twisted and dark ever since the Blight ran them over and left them grappling for high ground like little children playing at war. Now everything is impossible, yet it still happens.

"We discussed that. Nathaniel thought you'd make a deal with them. I told him you wouldn't." A grin splits Sigrun's face, then a shade of doubt creeps into it. "It probably wasn't very nice of us to make bets. Did they hurt you a lot?"

"No." He makes a dismissive half-gesture to go with his half-truth, getting to his feet. "You won your little bet, however."

Who would have thought he'd ever advocate the idea of uniting the nations of Thedas against the darkspawn – or any other threat for that matter? But fate's sense of humour has proven itself twisted and dark ever since the Blight ran them over and left them grappling for high ground like little children playing at war. Even those among them who had been forging battles for so long they could not remember a different life.

"Ha! I knew it." She heaves herself up and stands on the floor, legs wide apart and arms folded across her chest, like a statue. A statue with a smug look of victory colouring its face. "The commander and you are two of a kind."

"Don't tell her that. That's hardly a compliment."

"Oh?" Sigrun tilts her head, the corners of her mouth curled upwards. "Because you tried to kill her? I think she's moved past that. She was so heartbroken when you left, did you know? At one point she drank four bottles of wine by herself - she just kept going, no one could keep up. I thought she was even going to bed Anders, but I'm fairly certain she didn't. _Shit_. She'd kill me if she knew I told you that."

"Then why did you?" he retorts, harsher than intended, feeling irrationally angry on Elissa's behalf and slightly uncomfortable with the implications about the mage though this is hardly the time or the place for it.

The dwarf pauses for a beat, apparently considering his question very seriously.

"She keeps too many secrets," she says eventually. "I think it's a surface tradition. Never telling anyone how you feel. That just doesn't make any _sense_."

Once, not too long ago, she had asked if Loghain was Elissa's father, he recalls with the same annoyed twinge at the back of his mind as her words had invoked back then. A moment's cold clarity. Now they're tinged with the same streak of worry that accompany many of his meetings with his own daughter after the civil war – the knowledge that he's a disadvantage to be set aside yet she keeps insisting on protecting him, publicly defending him in deeds if not in words, stubbornly refusing to sever the ties.

"Some fine prize awaits you then?" he asks, to change the subject. Though she may be too nosy for her own good and ill-suited to the subtlety required for this kind of intimate existence among others, Loghain is rather fond of the dwarf girl. She fights with reckless abandon and seems unperturbed by surface life although it must be as foreign to her as anything he can possibly imagine. There's a raw strength in that, an irreverent sort of pride and toughness. "For winning the bet?"

"Oh. Yes." The dwarf looks a bit embarrassed for the first time. "It's a bit... private, so I don't think Nathaniel wants me to tell you what it is."

"Then by all means, _don't_." His words come out as more of a exasperated groan than anything else, fuelled by a genuine desire _not_to know what private promises the dwarf and Howe's surly brat have given each other to pass time this long, cold winter.

"Right." Sigrun's surprised chuckle makes Loghain feel as old as the stones around them, but it's a passing sensation and quickly erased when the doors swing open and Elissa stands before them, surrounded by a dozen Wardens.

"It's time for supper," she declares, unceremoniously dropping her sword on the floor. The Wardens scatter around her, heading for the promised meal, without doubt and with no audible protests.

"You're all bloody," Sigrun observes, rather needlessly considering the frozen stains on the commander's face that flare up in an angry shade of dark red in the warmth and light of this room.

"We've cleared out a flock of Blight wolves nearby." Elissa slumps down on a chair and hoists her right leg to remove the heavy boot that lands beside her sword with a thud. She repeats the procedure with the other leg and adds another snow-clad boot to the pile. Loghain wonders briefly if the servants' work load has doubled through her presence alone; she remains one of the sloppiest, most careless people he has ever met. "Varel tells me the farmers have been complaining about them for weeks."

"We've killed well over fifty already," Sigrun says. "I think Rolan and Nathaniel have kept count."

Elissa frowns. "Huh. I wonder why they're so lively recently."

"There likely is an alpha wolf hiding in some lair," Loghain points out. "Do you want me to send scouts to investigate?"

She looks up, a few strands of sweaty hair falling into her eyes as she removes her hood. They have torn apart all the rules and their carefully drawn maps, but he _is_her general and they are back in Ferelden with Ferelden's duties and hopes to steer them so this is what they do. The expression on Elissa's face tells him she agrees.

"Yes." She nods and returns her attention to removing the bloody pieces of metal from her body. "Thank you."

When they're the only two Wardens remaining in the room, Loghain allows himself the freedom to watch her; it feels like a rare luxury or an indulgence he isn't certain he should give in to, but he does all the same. If he's being honest that, too, had found its way into the way their previous lives were organised.

"Blasted bloody _winter_," his commander grunts to herself, shedding the breastplate with a little grimace. There's a half-healed injury on her chest, Loghain knows, wishing he didn't. When they left Orlais is had been a festering wound, holding no promise of healing smoothly. "It'll be the death of us."

"You're Fereldan," he points out, silently amused even if he knows better than to show it. Her sour tone is often merely a cover, hiding that dark stream of humour that he finds so ridiculously appealing, but today she's closed around her own misery, her skin an impenetrable armour.

Even so, or perhaps because of it, he find her very much the same woman as the one he left only because he was being dragged away. She's grim and gritty, ungraceful and _magnificent_ and as he observes the way she sits back, dragging her hands back through her hair, he can feel a shift in the room when the thick fabric of old shadows and ghosts that he has always associated with her seem to be rendered transparent. There are times when Loghain watches the Commander of the Grey Warden and wonders if he has found a living, breathing looking glass because in the depths of her eyes he sees a young man who knelt before a king without a throne. He sees the king, too, in all his charismatic goodness. And the queen, firm and arrogant and _unshakeable_.

In this room, during this shaky truce in their long war, he sees Elissa for the first time in a very long time. Shamefully long overdue he sees _her_, unattached to everything else, disentangled from the threads of his own life.

The older he gets, he finds that memories have a way of moving through him at the oddest of times; they're sharp and clear stabs of the past, the layers of time blending so seamlessly it often seems there is no difference between then and now.

But there is and she is currently giving him a questioning glance before slipping on a pair of leather boots and pulling a tunic over her head. With hands used to the motion she cleans herself up, wiping blood and sweat off her face with a damp towel that she promptly throws over the armour when she's done. She steps over her discarded belongings and heads towards the door – and the meal. Loghain follows, still watching her with that odd and rather pathetic desire to savour the moment coupled with an even odder sense of knowing something is wrong with her but not knowing exactly what.

"_What_?" she asks, appropriately but for a completely different reason. As she turns her head to look at him, something softens in her face and he can see the faint outlines of a smile buried there.

Loghain shakes his head, briefly. "Nothing."

.

.

* * *

.

.

The keep lives on the ebb and flow of the Warden's whereabouts and now more than ever the sense of old secrets overwhelmes her. Secrets of these old buildings – the old paths leading from the keep straight into to the very heart of darkness – and the old truths about the Order now counting the Vigil among its scarce resources.

It's a world of its own, Elissa thinks now as she braves the stiffly cold grounds, wrapped in a fur cloak. A silent place, sealed off from the rest of Thedas. A convent, or a cage. _No one is being kept here against their will._

_Well_.

In her head she rattles off the names of the Orlesians to make them seem more real, wills them to belong here. Installing twenty new Wardens is more of a task than she would have imagined, though she had hardly imagined it at all until they had all been safely escorted to Amaranthine and there are moments when she regrets bringing them along.

They're becoming too many, she thinks irrationally these days, thinks it when she's on the verge of sleep or bleary from just waking up. It's too much, too many lives, too high a number.

She knows their names, barely, and she knows she can count on their loyalty. Beyond that she finds that she has no urgent need for further ties of friendship or obligation, wonders when she watches them in the dining hall in the mornings if she will ever feel closer to them than she does here and now, considering them mere currency in their war. _Better some unknown Orlesians than honest Fereldan farmers. _

It's a heavy thought, an ancient weight in her body.

The new bunch of Warden does, however, add _life _to the tired old stones, a notion of something _new_ that seems to breathe between the restored walls and the half-mended history. The Howes of days past would likely even approve, Elissa thinks, when she remembers her history lessons. Not that their approval from beyond the grave means anything but there's a sense of rightness in it all the same.

Everything is frozen around them but there's a relenting softness in the air today, as though nature is offering a faint promise of spring around the corner. They deserve it after this cold, turbulent year that has ended in this snowy nightmare – _Maker-forsaken cold_ as some people call it, _worse than the sodding Blight _others claim. Elissa looks over at the guards on duty and the handful of servants that remain here, struggling to maintain their obligations regardless of season or weather. Again, that dread creeps up her spine.

Too much, too _many_.

Then she finally reaches the guard barracks where she is told Anders has taken up residency while she's been gone, quickening her steps as she approaches the door. Her body feels warm despite the cold, her mouth sticky and dry at the same time, her head _swelling_with each hour that passes.

He greets her in the doorway, as pale and sickly-looking as she feels, and shoves the door shut behind her before she's had time to even turn around. For a second they're face to face, pressed tight together by the small space in his quarters. Anders is the first to look away. There's a membrane of watchful fear around him, as though he waits for something to attack them. _Weirder than usual_, Nathaniel had said when she asked for his opinion. She's willing to give him right on that account at least.

"How have you been?" she asks without preamble, mostly because he doesn't give her the impression that their conversation will be a lengthy one and she has a badly nursed wound that makes her light-headed every time she raises her arms.

"Oh you know, darkspawn, nightmares, the tainted blood thing." His tone is forced, strained, but he tries to smile his most radiant smile even so.

Elissa leans against the desk that takes up most of the floor space that is not occupied by the bed. Anders stops in the middle of the room and stands there for a while, looking at her as though there are things he needs to say but he remains silent.

Of all the new recruits, he's the one that touches something in her. It's the streak of light in him, she thinks, that patch of goodness that could so easily be twisted into bitterness or cynicism or something darker still. The Circle, for all the good she assumes it must do, also creates mages unable to survive outside of it because they lack defences, lack experiences, lack everything that cannot be built from two empty hands and a lifetime of longing. Barren creatures always crave _more_.

Anders, Elissa figures, must be about the same age as her but a string of escape attempts and a supposed list of romantic endeavours aside, he's hardly _lived_. She feels an odd desire to protect him, though she isn't certain against what.

"I need your help," she says instead.

When she removes her tunic and sits on his desk wearing nothing but trousers and a breast band she half-expects him to make some remark, offer a trite innuendo, leer at least a little bit. The mage she remembers recruiting some months ago would have. But Anders merely leans closer, all dry hands and furrowed brow and a voice that sounds more serious than she can remember it.

"This is a fatal injury," he says.

"Oh."

The pain his gentle prodding causes is quite overwhelming and when he notices how hard she clutches the edge of the table, he relents, giving her a searching glance instead. "It smells of some sort of venom and... magic?"

Her throat dry and tight, Elissa nods. She hadn't expected it to be _that_dangerous, has put off having it examined for nearly a week now, after all. Poison and magic. A stupid combination, to be certain. There's a memory at the back of her mind of Arl Eamon and magical poisoning and she closes her eyes.

"Can you remove it?"

"I'm a mage, not a miracle worker."

"That's not very reassuring, you know." Elissa opens her eyes again, staring straight into Anders' midsection and praying silently that he wears smallclothes despite some stray remarks in her memory that suggest the opposite. She distracts herself by examining his belt which seems gaudy, even for a mage. It has runes engraved in the leather and green stones that look diamond-hard and glitter vaguely in the light that surrounds them.

Anders makes a sound that is caught half-way between a sigh and a grunt. "I know."

Then, without alerting her, he begins to heal her wound and for a little moment when everything spins and her chest makes an inward noise like it's tearing itself open, Elissa considers crying. She hasn't cried from physical pain since she woke up in Denerim with more scar tissue in the making than actual flesh from her neck down but this, she thinks and clenches her teeth, this is _death_.

_You give a little bit of yourself to the person you're healing_, Wynne says in her memory. _It can be detrimental for a weak or inexperienced mage; this is why we train our healers rigorously in the Circle._ Elissa looks into Anders's eyes as his hands cover her wound and fills her with a dull pain that hums in her blood and seems to seep out into every part of her, singing to every inch of her body.

She looks into his eyes, anchors herself in him and in the stream of white light that floods out of his body and into hers. It makes a sound, the magic. A low, dwindling sound that -

_Blue_.

Elissa blinks once, twice, opens her mouth to ask about the shifting colour because Anders is glowing, _crumbling _in a light that doesn't seem anything like the healing magic she has become familiar with over the past two years. A blue glow around him bursts through the white light, tears it apart, boils beneath his skin and she has the instinct to push him away, her hands on his arms and her heart thumping loudly in her chest.

Then everything goes dark around her and when she can see again her wound has closed – though the corners remain angry and frayed – and Anders has turned his back on her, cradling his head in his hands and making a whimpering sound.

"Are you-" Elissa straightens up, looking down at her wound again. Her head has cleared up, the fever seems to be waning and Maker, she can lift her arms without risking a complete meltdown followed by serious head injury.

"You'll be fine."

"Good. Thank you." She takes a step in his direction, tries to look him in the eyes again. "Are you okay?"

"I'm sorry," Anders says hoarsely, turning away from her quickly as though she's a too-hot hearth. Reflexively she reaches for him, grabbing hold of the hem of his sleeve. For a fraction of a moment the air seems to still in anticipation, then Anders pulls away from her so forcefully that Elissa nearly loses her balance and has to grab hold of the desk again for support.

"_Anders_."

"I'm _sorry_," he says again, sounding angry now. "I'm drained. I should... rest for a bit. Take the potions on my desk for the pain."

There are moments, Elissa thinks, watching Anders move further away from her in the small room. Rare moments when the layers of time and place seem to overlap, becoming momentarily transparent so that everything shines through them and nothing is left in the dark. Those are the moments when you ask important questions and receive answers that do not try to mask the truth.

Loghain in their camp outside Denerim, a burning nation as their backdrop. _You tell me: what do you want? _

Fergus in what once was their home, his eyes dark fires that had found no escape. _How?_

The outlines of Anders' back in front of her now, three steps and endless stretches of time separate them. _What have you done?_

But Elissa doesn't speak as she heads for the door.

And the moment is gone, if it ever existed at all.

.

.

.

Judging by her dull headache and the unpleasant, blurry edges to her thoughts it ought to be bedtime, Elissa reflects as she sits in her office.

It's not. The afternoon light from the windows is still harsh and bright and _cutting_.

"Commander," Varel says and a forcedly patient tone in his voice suggests he's been repeating her title a few times already.

Elissa blinks, lifting her gaze from the sweetened tea in front of her. _Bed rest for a couple of days, _Anders had told her in passing as they met in the throne room. When she thinks about that, her mind flickers back to the other scene with him this very morning. While she can't claim to be an expert on mages she has never seen one react to anything the way Anders had reacted and the possible reasons for it have wormed their way inside her head where they spin around, relentless and prodding.

"Yes?" she manages.

"As I was saying, there is some unrest among the Wardens. They talk."

"Recruits gossip worse than fishermen," Elissa sighs, echoing her father in a different life, speaking of guardsmen talking among themselves about things that had not concerned them. _Is Lady Elissa to remain unmarried? Is she in some kind of predicament? Was she not to be sent to Gwaren after all?_

"That may be so." Varel raises an eyebrow. "But you have been back for six days without having held any kind of counsel even with your senior Wardens. They're growing suspicious."

She groans. "There's nothing to be suspicious _about_."

"I know that, Commander. They don't, however."

The morning after their return, Elissa and Loghain had informed every Warden at Vigil's Keep of the conflict in Orlais – in brief explanations and with little room for speculation, but they had wanted to take the wrap off things as quickly as possible. Apparently it had not been enough. Of _course _it had not been enough, she reproaches herself. War breeds conflict, she should have been more forthcoming. Her own exhaustion should not be the scale on which she weighs possible ways to handle her soldiers, but she has been beyond tired since Orlais. At least Anders had managed to heal her - she makes a mental note to reward him in some subtle way that he won't brag too much about to miss entirely.

"Very well," she says. "Let them know that there will be a gathering tomorrow morning."

The seneschal nods. "I will take care of it."

"Thank you." She manages a smile, though she can feel the muscles in her face protest a bit at the effort. "Is that all?"

"Not yet, I'm afraid. His Majesty sends his regards and he wants you and Loghain to travel to Denerim as soon as your other duties allow." Varel hands over a letter marked with the royal seal. "I have no doubt that the visit is further explained in His Majesty's private correspondence to you, Commander."

"Right." She places the letter on top of the ever-growing pile of things she ought to take care of today or tonight or anywhere between now and tomorrow morning. "I'll have a reply ready before nightfall."

When he exits the room, Elissa sinks back in her chair and shuts her eyes, promising herself that she will merely take a brief moment's rest and then dig right into today's long list of tasks.

The next thing she knows, her neck feels like stone and her back is sore as though she's been walking for hours. It's dark around her. She looks up in an attempt to orient herself in these surroundings and realises that she's still at her desk, in the middle of her massive pile of work. The dark wood of the table is black in the dusk and the light from a door that's opening somewhere else settles against it in trembling, uneven patterns.

"Elissa," Loghain says behind her.

"What?" She tries to glance over her shoulder but the muscles in her neck protest wildly at the idea and instead she has to heave herself up straight, using her hands and arms. This is not worthy of the Commander of the Grey, she decides, squaring her shoulders somewhat. While the pain from her injury is mostly gone, it seems to have been replaced by a stiffness in her entire body.

Loghain walks up to the desk; she can feel the nearness of his body as it brushes against her arm and there's an instinct, base and quick and awkward like most of her long-denied needs, to reach out for him and hold on.

"I spoke to the mage," he says, leaning down over her, clearly intending to personally make sure she gets that bed rest the healer had ordered.

_May the Maker spit on Anders_, she thinks but her anger is very efficiently interrupted by Loghain's arm around her waist, pulling her to her feet in one swift motion that reminds her of how strong he is. She leans heavily on him.

"He always exaggerates." Elissa wonders how her body can feel so immovable, how her limbs can be so indescribably weary that every step makes her wince.

"He didn't give me any details." There's a hint of irritation at that confession, she notices, and smiles inwardly. "Though I'm certain you are correct."

"Oh. Well, I'm in no danger." As though her body wishes to embarrass her further, her words are accompanied by a sudden wave of nausea that upsets what little momentum Loghain's aid has given her. "Just some aftermath of an injury."

"You slept through supper," he says pointedly.

She briefly considers showing him the magically mended flesh but he seems to be taking no interest in that at the moment, focusing solely on getting her to bed. And then, of course, the double meaning of _that _expression makes her chuckle, since she's still half-delirious from the potion-edged sleep and has the emotional maturity of a stable boy, according to Fergus.

Loghain frowns when she looks at him but he doesn't ask any questions. His face is so near, she thinks, curling her fingers harder around his shoulder; she remembers the way he tastes, the warm scent of his skin, the deep, hungry notes in the way he kisses.

They walk slowly through the corridor, one step at the time. He may be strong, but she's built like a warrior and made even heavier by her condition. When they reach her bedchamber, Loghain opens the door with his free hand, while keeping the other firm around her waist and Elissa grants herself the liberty of resting her forehead against the curve of his neck.

_Too much_. The thought fleets in and out of her head as he lowers her onto the bed and she all but protests by clinging to him, too long to pretend it doesn't happen.

It does happen.

She wants to remain in his embrace, chaste as it is, wants to drag him down over her and feel awake again, _alive_. There are words in her mouth waiting to be spoken and she wants to say them now, with one foot in the Fade, because these kinds of words are a rare commodity between people like them who are built for battle, for war.

_Maker help me but I love you. _

Too _much_.

"If you do not remain in this bed, I will send Sigrun up here to knock you out." His voice is low, it dances against her skin and into her blood.

She smiles, eyes closed, already drifting back to sleep.

.  
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* * *

_**A/N:** Thank you for reading and for remembering this dusty old thing. Special thanks to those of you who take the time to let me know what you think._

_I promise there will be Explanations in the next chapter._


	4. No rest in this world or beyond

The following night, they hold a meeting at the Vigil.

If the gathering that same morning had been for all Wardens, old and new, this one is less official and held in the upstairs hall, which is a smaller room and not intended for any big gatherings. Nathaniel had mentioned that this had been his family's sitting room once upon a time, before darkspawn and bottomless greed had destroyed the Howe bloodline. Perhaps it's because there are notions of their past lives lined up like a little string of pearls, but Elissa can _see_them in here. Whining little Thomas who never even dared to play with wooden swords; quiet, clever Delilah and Nathaniel, ever the sullen older brother who rarely, if ever, got along with Fergus.

She looks at him here, older and taller and broader of shoulder and not as insufferable, not now when duty and some scraps of trust have straightened his back. Varel tells her Nathaniel has been increasingly competent and enthusiastic in Elissa's absence. _Maybe I'll go away for good_, she had said, her pride slightly – _absurdly_- wounded at the suggestion that the Wardens are doing better without her. Even so it's a comfort to her in these awful times. When the war outruns her and the Taint catches up with Loghain, someone can shoulder the responsibilities without cracking open under the weight. Carry them all forward.

_I sound like father again_. She leans forward, elbows on the table, as she's reaching for the wine bottle to refill her cup. Then she takes a large mouthful and looks at the people around her. It's a small crowd, these people that she can trust. Apart from Loghain, there's Leonie, Nathaniel and Sigrun which seems like a depressingly tiny crowd compared to the one she surrounded herself with during the Blight. But those were scattered souls with a common goal - this, she tries to convince herself, is the Silver Order. She's heard Sigrun and Nathaniel make clever retorts about it, this name that has stuck since she ordered all Wardens and soldiers of the Keep to wear silverite armour.

Loghain had thought it a sensible investment, if she remembers correctly. Elissa gives him a quick glance and gathers herself once more.

"Let us begin then," she says.

"Yes." Nathaniel sits back, hands on his knees; his own wine is still untouched. Some people just don't take to drinking regardless of situation, she thinks grimly.

"If we may start at the beginning, Commander," Leonie half-asks, half-suggests.

"Please do." Sigrun chimes in, glancing quickly at Nathaniel. "I'm still confused and it's not because I've had too much ale."

Nathaniel doesn't respond to that but Elissa notices a shade of amusement in his face. Apparently miracles do happen and even Howes can find a sense of humour.

"As am I." Leonie offers a little smile, more natural and easy than anything Nathaniel could have managed. "When I came to Ferelden, all I knew was that my brothers and sisters had been attacked and killed and I was the only one who managed to get out alive."

_Convenient_, Loghain comments somewhere in a recent past, words swooped up in a torrent of sea-sickness, injuries and confusion. It must have been anything _but_convenient for Leonie; she can't remember if she ever found the time to correct him.

He's silent now at least, merely observes the Orlesian Warden with a neutral expression.

"We had been aware of an increasing number of conflicts within the Orlesian order," Leonie continues. "One of our mages in Lydes – a fantastic arcane warrior – had left us recently. She said she was going to Val Royeaux to seek some answers, to study magic. From what I gather, she joined forces with the Wardens who later came for us."

"The mage betrayed her Order then?" Loghain asks.

Leonie shrugs. "No. And yes. Jeanna believed in her cause."

"Indeed."

"Think what you will of her, _brother_." A hardness creeps into Leonie's voice and Elissa feels a surge of sympathy for her; if she closes her eyes she can still see Leonie kneeling beside Jeanna's body in an abandoned Tevinter ruin outside Lydes, a place soaked in history and magic. _The Old Gods still whisper to us_, the mage had said, as blunt and brave as only dying can make you. _May the Maker forgive you_, Leonie had answered, drawing her blade. _May the Maker show mercy. _It was only afterwards Elissa had understood that they had been lovers and she had felt sick then, the earth spinning horribly beneath her. "The group of Wardens she joined in Val Royeaux wanted to end the cycle of the Blights, this endless struggle of darkspawn and humans. They may hold different beliefs, but they're Wardens, too."

"We think we have identified two active fractions in the Orlesian Order," Elissa takes over, looking at Nathaniel and Sigrun, then at Loghain. "One of them being the Wardens sworn to the cause of collaborating with the darkspawn. They seem to have aimed for a world where there's no more taint or where everyone carries the taint. Which is what the Architect claimed that he wanted as well. End the conflict. Create a truce."

"We have studied those Orlesian Warden chronicles you mentioned before you left," Nathaniel says. "It seems the Architect we encountered once attempted to make his offer to the Orlesian Warden-Commander."

Loghain frowns. "I know of this."

"Yes. The journal we've read mentioned Ferelden. King Maric, even."

"Start from the beginning," Elissa says, reaching for a plate of pastries in front of her. She grabs two of them before passing it on to Sigrun. "Tell me everything you've learned about this Architect and those who met him before."

They talk until the candles have burned down to mere whispers of light and Elissa is acutely aware of the weight of her own eyelids.

"I can understand it, though." Sigrun looks contemplative, spinning an empty wine bottle between her hands. "It's just a circle, going on and on. Can't blame them for wanting it to end."

Battle-worn, Elissa thinks. She could see it in the Wardens they fought in Orlais too. The desperation, the stubborn conviction in their eyes and swords. The hopeless way in which they had, ultimately, wanted things to be _different_.

_There's no honour in this,_ a man had gasped, on his knees on the ground as she was driving her sword though him, and she had done it with her eyes open, thinking _I know, brother, but the world __is a little short of honour._

She doesn't _want_ to think like that. At times, especially recently, her own mind scares her. The dark edges to it, the sharp angles around each thought, the way she can feel the massive presence of those before her in every move she makes; _sacrifice the few to protect the many_, Riordan says in her memory but there's so much _death _and so little hope.

"This darkspawn general is dead now, however," Loghain cuts into her thoughts like a streak of cold clarity. She gives him a grateful look. "As are the Wardens in Orlais who were fighting for the same thing."

"Those we know about at least." Leonie nods.

She speaks the truth. The truth they have been offered at the moment, however. Like so many things, Elissa knows, it may as well be a mere string of misunderstandings and complications but they will have to solve the problems as they appear. _Plan for the worst and hope for the best _she thinks and her mind leaps to Loghain again.

"What is the other fraction, Commander?" Nathaniel takes a mouthful of wine, then folds his arms across his chest. Elissa has to blink, remind herself that they are not yet done with the conversation. She had already abandoned it in her head, snatched the remaining wine and found an unobserved spot for her and Loghain. _Later. Definitely later. _

The sigh Leonie lets out seems like a mirror of Elissa's own mood.

"It's more of a... scattered group," she says.

"That's the way they appear, at least," Elissa adds. "But they seem to have a connection to the Tevinter magisters."

"Mages," Nathaniel purses his mouth, looking uncannily like his father for half a heartbeat. Elissa looks away.

"Not just mages." She empties her cup of wine, looks up again. "It's more complicated than that. We think."

"Jeanna had ties to this sort of magic," Leonie says. "She often spoke of the origin of the darkspawn, said there are mages in Tevinter who have studied the subject for centuries."

"Of course there are." Loghain raises an eyebrow, sighing harsh in his throat.

"What do we know of the Order in Tevinter?" Nathaniel looks at Leonie who casts a glance at Elissa. They should know something at least, but since secrecy is one of the rare virtues among their brothers and sisters in arms, perhaps it's only to be expected to have empty hands and no leads.

"Not much," she has to concede, and catches Loghain's gaze. She knows he's irritated with the trackless, dubious ruin of their Order the same way he's always frustrated with incompetence and lack of organisation and somehow she finds it almost _endearing_now, sharing his thoughts on the matter. "Quite frankly, we do not know a lot about the Wardens in the Free Marches either."

"Join us in the darkness." Sigrun makes the trite old joke sound both tired and hopeless, but she braves a smile all the same.

"Yes. We need less mythology and more structure." Elissa stretches her legs, nodding gravely. "Leonie and I sent a large troop of Senior Wardens to Weisshaupt before we returned to Ferelden."

"Is that wise?" Sigrun looks surprised.

"It's no more foolish than anything else we could have done," Leonie replies; for a moment Elissa looks at her and they lock their gazes over the table where maps and journals frame their wine and bread, reminding Elissa of simpler times. Campfires and aching feet and the sole concern of how to slay an Archdemon occupying most of her thoughts and nightmares. Perhaps that would not count as simpler times for ordinary people, but Elissa has long given up on all chances of being counted among ordinary people. For her, that time has gradually come to represent simplicity.

"We've agreed on certain coded messages they will send us once they reach the fortress in Weisshaupt," Leonie explains.

"Different messages for all of them." Elissa glances sideways at Loghain who gives a small nod, a quiet approval she hadn't known she wanted until just now. There's a warmth settling at the pit of her stomach.

"You did well there," he says. "Save first-hand information, this is the best we can hope for at present."

"Tell me we're not headed for the Anderfels." Nathaniel gives Elissa a sceptical glare as though he secretly suspects her to have mapped out a route already, ordering them all on the endless journey to the heart of their Order.

She shakes her head. "I intend to remain in Ferelden for as long as I can. Now that we have sorted out the most pressing matters in Orlais."

"We hardly know what the future will bring," Leonie says. "But we found the Wardens who caused this so for the time being, we should be making every effort to fortify our own position."

It's the truth, Elissa thinks, once more. And at the same time there are hollows of lies in what they say. They had found the Wardens who turned on their brothers and sisters but not all of them; they have not followed the leads to every group of Wardens in all the nations of Thedas, have not found the roots of the issue and pulled them out, cut them off from whatever darkness that has spawned them. What she had felt in Orlais she still feels, the mistrust and fury spreading through her veins faster than any darkspawn blood.

_The edge of Thedas seeps and bleeds_. It's a sentence that flutters through her as she twirls the empty cup between her hands, letting the smooth surface cool her palms.

There's always unrest after a Blight. Elissa had read Riordan's journals when they found them in Arl Eamon's estate once everything was over and Denerim smelled of lyrium and fire. They spoke of old beliefs, of blood rains and omens in the sky, of a kind of blind desperation outlining conflicts, wars, futile uproars. When there is nothing reasonable about life, people look to the Maker, to causes, to magic. A Blight wages a war on reason. It is one thing to accept that men kill other men for lands or thrones, another thing entirely to accept that ancient dragons rise from beneath the earth, wanting nothing more than wasteful destruction.

She had hoped in vain that this Order she had been forced into, would stand above such things but it doesn't and instead it's rotting from the inside.

_You are being too drastic, sister_, Leonie comforts in Elissa's memory; it's a grey memory, the two of them huddled up against the rain outside Montsimmard, against the futile hopes that it's over now, that they can rest. Elissa had not answered that the only form of rest that she could ever hope for was missing, possibly dead and that she could not stop until she knew that for certain. She had sat there with Leonie's firm body against her own and her own heart closed to everything else.

The wind outside the keep suddenly makes the windows clatter and something chilly passes through the room as though there's an opening in the stones somewhere. Elissa stifles a grimace, trying not to think of the many ways in which the restoration may have been unsuccessful.

"So what are our current orders, Commander?" Nathaniel's eyes are calm and searching, and he reminds her abruptly of her duties.

"We continue to hold the enemies at bay here in Ferelden," Elissa says, the word _enemy_nearly too wide and vast for her mouth. "I will send a few of our Orlesian Wardens to the south to oversee the recruiting there."

She had feared that this would be Loghain's own order for himself once they got back to Amaranthine. To return to Gwaren or to the recruitment effort elsewhere and she had already prepared an annoyed retort to his way of slipping through the chain of command with his supposed proposals. Splitting up the utterly tiny group of people she can trust seems a bad idea at present and she is not inclined to let anyone in this room out of her sight for too long. Loyalty is expensive in times like these.

Loghain had not suggested that, however. He has, as a matter of fact, not suggested anything thus far, merely awaited her orders like any other Warden and Elissa cannot tell whether she's relieved or suspicious as his current leniency. It merely seems to suit him badly.

"Are you going to remain at the Vigil, Commander?" Sigrun looks tired behind her oversized mug of ale.

Elissa nods. "For the time being. Loghain and I are travelling to Denerim as soon as the weather allows but I intend to return."

She makes a mental note to open Alistair's letter that had slipped straight out of her mind and into a large heap of work that she never got around to finish last night. With a little inward wince she remembers the thick cloud of exhaustion she had battled and how disoriented she had been even this morning as the servants came to fetch her. Her fingers travel almost subconsciously to the little bump on her skin that is the sole remain of her wound; in all her nightmares lately she succumbs to it.

"Good," Sigrun smiles. "It's more interesting with you around."

"We should also expect some Warden visitors shortly," Leonie adds. "Our brother Stroud has written and told us he wishes to discuss an expedition to the Deep Roads in the Free Marches."

As their long evening ebbs out into a rather companionable atmosphere and most questions have been answered, Leonie is the first to excuse herself.

"I need to fall asleep before Juliana and Dorthe return to the barracks," she says as she's pushing herself to her feet. The recent scars on her hands and in her face are glittering in the dusk. "They snore terribly, I'm afraid."

"Better than sleeping in the Deep Roads," Sigrun says brightly.

Her comment makes Leonie smile. "You have a point, sister."

They leave together; Nathaniel nods curtly towards Elissa and Loghain before he follows suit.

A slow, deep sigh leaves her body as she sits back in her chair and breathes for a few moments; smoothing out the flurry of thoughts and sentiments that the long meeting has brought.

Vigilance, she tells herself. Duty, vigilance, war. It's the nations on her map, the pieces of land stitched together to form a world, and it's her only choice. She is well aware of that.

She is also aware that in a choice between Loghain and her endless supply of responsibilities, her responsibilities must come first. There is no question. Though it seems absurd to not even be able to sit down alone with her general to plot a course for the near future. Or do other things that she barely dares to think about at _all _since they seem so far away, like events that unfolded themselves around the two of them and now have closed all borders, re-drawn the limits.

The last time she shared this old keep with him the walls had been unbroken and the rooms had not caved in around them. It had been a _home _then, shaped to comfort and resilience.

Now it's a fortress and she feels the difference in her bones.

"I left a bottle of Antivan brandy in here somewhere," she says to Loghain, finally letting her gaze linger on him for as long and as intently as she wants. It's been so long, she cannot look at him _enough _and the realisation that it seems entirely mutual nearly makes her breathless. "You want to finish it with me."

He raises an eyebrow; the corners of his mouth are twitching. "That was not a question."

"No." She rummages around in a cupboard near the bookshelf. Back in Highever, Fergus had taught her early on to always hide secret belongings – stolen food, bottles of wine and the illustrated copy of _Thief of Virtue _that Elissa had pilfered from her mother's personal library - in remote chambers of the castle, or in places no one would think to search. "Should it have been?"

"Perhaps not."

"Good," she says triumphantly as she holds up the bottle and looks at him over her shoulder. There's more brandy left in it than she remembers.

"We ought to plan a better defence for the arling," Loghain says; there's a rustling noise outlining his words. When she looks over her shoulder she sees him clean up the stacks on the table and she smiles hastily to herself. He's tidy, which has always surprised her and still does. "I spoke to the seneschal, he tells me the southern border is still much too weak."

"We should definitely see to that." She returns to the table, bottle in one hand and two unused cups in the other. The dusk floods the room but her eyes have adjusted to it enough to notice the little things. His tucked-in smile, familiar and rare; the shape of his hands on the table, his hair that shifts in blue in this light, or lack thereof. When she hands him one cup and fills it up, her fingers brush over his own and she doesn't pull away; Loghain looks up, straight into her eyes and for a moment they remain like that, strangely _intertwined_.

Being near him is a comfort and an unrest all at once, a low fluttering motion in her body. Perhaps that is how it is, how it should be - she doesn't claim to know and her own memories are full of fragments of stolen moments: campfires, lakes, tender words and Alistair's heartbreaking honesty colliding with her own steely resolve.

This is not even remotely similar; it's a different world altogether, drawn on different maps.

"We should also do something about your location," she continues when Loghain doesn't press on with the subject of how to defend the southern border. "You're my second, there is no need for you to sleep in the barracks."

"Wardens don't have those kinds of ranks," he reminds her.

Elissa sighs and knocks back her brandy. "I do." With another sigh, she adds: "I want you closer."

His face softens at that, though he does not speak. He takes a mouthful of his drink and observes her in silence.

They both know that caution is a necessity, that his debts to Ferelden haven't been paid, that no matter how much blood they both shed for this country, it will always demand a bit more. The old ways and stone-carved traditions, generation after generation of people not budging an inch in the face of change. There are many out there who would still oppose her as arlessa, regardless of how many darkspawn hordes she keeps at bay, regardless of the sacrifices the Wardens have made for this nation's future. For the time being, with her heroic grace still somewhat intact and the new king's support shining bright like a beacon, she is untouchable.

But it's fragile, her armour. It will not take a great deal to wreck it: a misstep, a move in the wrong direction, a couple of years without the immediate threat of a Blight to keep the population grateful towards those who know how to fight it.

She has a feeling the years to come will etch several handfuls of dark stains on the silverite.

Just as Elissa reaches for the bottle again, inching closer to Loghain to refill his drink, there's footsteps outside the door. Instinctively, they both pull away their hands and straighten up in their seats, waiting for the knock.

"Yes?" Elissa says, her tone sharper than she intended. "Come in."

"I'm sorry to disturb you at this hour, Commander." Varel stands in the doorway, dark and stern like a bad omen. She feels something tighten in her chest, her body immediately snapping shut, becoming steel around her blood and heart.

"What's the matter?"

The seneschal looks at her, then at Loghain. "There's a situation not far from here."

"A situation?" Loghain stands up, falling so easily into the familiar patterns of duty and readiness that it seems everything else in his life is rare coincidence and extravagant luxury. It's almost disheartening to watch. Shrugging away the weight of that thought, Elissa stands too.

"Darkspawn?" she asks.

Varel nods, but there's no certainty in his face. "Five Wardens have been found dead, Commander. It's... they claim it looks like a massacre."


End file.
